Non-Incendiary Image of the Day: New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Supports Dr. Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General Edition

“The NRA has launched a campaign against President Obama’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General,Dr. Vivek Murthy. Why?” New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV) asks, rhetorically. “Because he believes gun violence is a public health problem.” Well yes, there is that. The National Rifle Association knows that gun control advocates are trying to frame gun rights as a public health concern to open a new front in their relentless, underhanded campaign to infringe upon Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep bear arms. More than that, the Doctors for Obama founder . . .

is profoundly anti-gun. Click here to peruse the Tweets we unearthed after a heads-up on Murthy’s post-Newtown outrage (at gun control laws which had nothing to do with the carnage). Apparently, we underplayed his antipathy to gun rights. NYAGV:

Because Dr. Murthy supports limits on ammunitions purchases, bans on semi-automatic weapon purchases, and increased funding for research on the effects of gun violence, he’s been called a “radical” by the NRA, which is going all-out to block his confirmation.

Huh. I didn’t know the Surgeon General hopeful supported ammo limits and a ban on all semi-automatic weapons. Even if NYAG is making sh*t up (what are the odds?) it’s clear Dr. Murthy is not going to subsume his anti-gun fervor to further his career. The offending Tweets are still on his feed, which has, admittedly, gone quiet.

Never mind. Dr. Murthy, like his supporters at NYAGV, couldn’t get the backing he needed to overcome Americans’ desire to defend their gun rights against insidious attacks from die-hard Obamanauts – as evidenced by the counter on the petition above. His nomination is toast.

For those of you who wish to savor the victory, or diss-miss the NRA’s pull in the corridors of power, here’s a priceless paragraph from Jim Barrett, Bloomberg Business Week’s token gun guy:

The retreat from Murthy also provides a reminder that liberals’ wishful thinking about the NRA being a “paper tiger” deserves once and for all to be rejected. In a strident letter to senators, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, called Murthy’s positions on guns “radical” and accused him of backing a “campaign against gun ownership.” In fact, Murthy favors a so-called assault weapons ban and mandatory safety training. His skepticism of civilian gun ownership is based on firsthand experience in hospital emergency rooms, where he has mopped up after bloody firearm violence. The claim that from the surgeon general’s office he’d have even marginal influence on gun policy, let alone implement a “radical” curtailment of gun ownership, seems off-kilter. But no matter how extreme the NRA’s stance, its wrath in pro-gun states must be taken seriously. When the group activates its local affiliates to turn out single-issue voters, they can make a difference in close races.

Incendiary stuff for a writer on Michael Bloomberg’s payroll – that will surely lead to his exit from same. But most welcome.

Of course Murthy doesn’t have broad backing. Aside from the fact that his only accomplishments have been creating advocacy groups against the 2nd amendment, he has very little experience. His main credential is political, not medical. If his interest was medical, he’d be working on substance abuse prevention and psychiatric services for poor overcrowded neighborhoods.

It becomes ever clearer that a professional on the make for political office and name-recognition cannot do better than to become an anti-gun-whatever, and ask the Joyce Foundation and Bloomberg for some money. “No one has heard of my medical career. Maybe I should become an anti-gun-doctor?” Sure. Go ahead. Even if you fail in your professed mission, you’ll build a loyal following among the urban left. That could carry you all the way to retirement.

Let’s take this one step further. I will consider him “Qualified” when Mikey Bloomberg and Shannon Watts (including her whole freaking family) makes him their personal doctor for their yearly check ups, pap smears, colon-rectal exams, etc. and then accepts whatever results he spits out.

Like all of Obama’s appointees, Murthy is, first and foremost, a political hack. His group, Doctors for Obama, which morphed conveniently into Doctors for America, had more influence on his being nominated than his non-existent medical management experience.

the guy is so UNQUALIFIED it is not funny. He has not run an ice cream stand let alone a department in a hospital. How the hell is he qualified to be the Surgeon General?? C’mon Barry – at least give us the courtesy of a nominee who, while we may disagree with about guns and the 2nd Amendment, at least garners the respect of his/her peers. This guy has been a policitical operative for you for the last 6 yrs. . . .

More like because he promotes policy regarding “gun violence” based on the kind of reasoning and empirical support that would cost him his medical license if used as the basis for recommending medical treatments.

The attack is not “off-kilter” if the Surgeon General declares “gun violence” to be a national public health care crisis, and then uses his office to try to “do something” about it. Maybe warning stickers? More likely, funding to the CDC to do research whose sole goal is to demonstrate how dangerous more guns are, to mandate health care providers request and require information about gun ownership as a way of reducing the “epidemic” of suicide and accidental deaths of children–who could POSSSIBLY be against that?
Dr. Murthy’s anti-gun stance and his support of Obama are precisely the reason he was selected for the nomination to this post–one for which he is otherwise unqualified because of his lack of relevant experience and expertise. From what I can gather, he is just another ivory tower intellectual with no real world experience beyond his medical training, and most definitively no administrative training or experience. He is most clearly a purely political choice.

The sad thing is that gun violence /is/ a public health issue.
Though as everyone reading this knows, it isn’t the guns that are unhealthy, it’s the people holding them who commit the acts of senseless violence. A SGOTUS who wants to focus on the actual public health issues around gun violence would be most welcomed by me.

Yes. the gun violence colloquialism is used so they can included suicide in the deaths. What they wont then except is the plain fact hat Japan, S. Korea and a couple of European countries easily have more “violence” with the muder+sucide aggregation. They then claim that somehow committing suicide by jumping off a building is somehow less violent and does not count

According to the NRA, Murthy isn’t qualified because of his stance on guns.

According to NYAGV, the only thing that qualifies Murthy is that he’s anti-gun,

I suggest that Murthy isn’t qualified because he’s merely a political operative who has no background in public health. Murthy would make a really good community organizer, but I don’t think that’s an actual job.

Good stuff. I’m glad Murthy is gone. Now Obama is off to nominate another thoroughly unqualified person for a high-profile position, and maybe he’ll scratch out a few more anti gun / anti freedom executive orders.

Like others have said, this man is completely unqualified to become the US Surgeon General. While not a military post, the position is the equivalent of a 3-star General/Admiral. Usually, one has to have some minimal record of accomplishment to ascend to that level. This guy isn’t even and Associate Professor of Medicine. He’s an IT guy and a political activist. Even if he were pro-2A, he wouldn’t be qualified for the position.
Then again, what would anyone expect from our ‘President’, a professional community organizer? Does anyone really think he’s got the country’s best interests in mind? Everything this charlatan of a president does is calculated to achieve his political goals. What a waste of DNA…

“His skepticism of civilian gun ownership is based on firsthand experience in hospital emergency rooms, where he has mopped up after bloody firearm violence.”

This is an asinine statement. Murthy is a hospitalist, boarded in Internal Medicine, apparently with some special interest in HIV.

For you non-medical folks, that means he works the floor of the hospital treating medical diseases in adults. He treats pneumonia, diabetes, kidney failure etc, not trauma in the ER. He would have had some exposure to the ER as a medical student, but his total “firsthand experience” is less than your average EMT and the only thing he would have been trusted to “mop up” as a modern medical student was the floors.

Full disclosure, I am a former EMT, now anesthesiologist in a small Montana hospital. I trained at a major, regional trauma center. I work with a great team of ER docs, surgeons, and nurses to resuscitate and repair people who suffer traumatic injuries of all sorts. Love the medicine docs, but they tend to stay as far away as possible from trauma.